Audiobooks narrated by Donald Corren

In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey among Ancient Trees

Ancient trees stand as sentinels against all odds while Earth and its people have changed around them. Award-winning author Anthony D. Fredericks examines their awe-inspiring longevity and evolutionary intelligence, drawing on expert interviews, scientific research, and a remarkable reverence for the environment. Fredericks focuses on ten of the oldest trees in the United States, ranging from the 1,200-year-old Seven Sisters Oak, a Southern icon draped in Spanish moss that has survived several hurricanes, to the Palmer’s Oak in Southern California that has cloned itself for 13,000 years to stay alive. Other trees include bristlecone pines, regarded as some of the oldest trees in the world, the quaking aspen known as Pando with more than 45,000 identical branches, the Bennett Juniper that grows on land heavily glaciated by the last ice age, and sequoias, the world’s largest trees. Each tree profile opens with time travel stories that provide global historical context and explore the geography at the time when the tree took root. In present day, Fredericks walks among many of the trees so that readers may too. His immersive perspective captures the trees’ grandeur and sage presence while exploring the science behind their resilience. A tree that’s lived more than 1,000 years is living archaeology—a tangible connection between the planet’s past and present that helps us better understand its future. Fredericks investigates these extended lifespans and their implications on ecology and humanity. In Search of the Old Ones marvels at thecomplexity of roots, the determination of growth, and the wisdom of forests. Beneath spreading canopies, readers will experience the strength and magnificence of the country’s most wondrous trees. A supplemental PDF is included with this audiobook.

Anthony D. Fredericks (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Dig

A riveting, first-ever, sweeping biography of Thomas Watson, Jr. - more important to the history and development of the modern world than Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie - who risked everything, personally and professionally, to reinvent IBM and launch the computer age that created the world we live in today Thomas Watson Jr. drove IBM to undertake the biggest gamble in business history with a revolution no other company of the age could dare- the creation in the 1960s of the IBM System/360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer that laid the foundation for the information technology future. Its success made IBM the most valuable company in America. Fortune magazine touted him as "the greatest capitalist who ever lived." Time named him one of the "One Hundred People of the Century." Behind closed doors, Watson was a multifaceted, complicated man. As a young man, he was a failed student and playboy, an unlikely candidate for corporate titan. He pulled his life together as a courageous World War II pilot and took over IBM after his father's death. He suffered from anxiety and depression so overwhelming that he spent days prostrate and locked in a bathroom at home while IBM faced crisis after crisis. And he carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of IBM with his brother Dick, who expected to follow him as CEO. But despite his many demons, he laid the foundation for what eventually became the global information technology industry, which dominates today's world. His story, and the industry he created, is equal to, if not more important than that of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, Vanderbilt and the railroads, and Morgan in finance.

Marc Wortman, Ralph Watson Mcelvenny (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Reaching Ninety

Martin Duberman, one of the LGBTQ+ community’s maverick thinkers and historians, looks back on ninety years of life, his history in the movement, and what he’s learned. In the early Sixties, Martin Duberman published a path-breaking article defending the Abolitionists against the then-standard view of them as “misguided fanatics.” In 1964, his documentary play, In White America, which reread the history of racist oppression in this country, toured the country—most notably during Freedom Summer—and became an international hit. Duberman then took on the profession of history for failing to admit the inherent subjectivity of all re-creations of the past. He radically democratized his own seminars at Princeton, for which he was excoriated by powerful professors in his own department, leading him to renounce his tenured full professorship and to join the faculty of the CUNY Graduate School. At CUNY, too, he was initially blocked from offering a pioneering set of seminars on the history of gender and sexuality, but after a fifteen-year struggle succeeded in establishing the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies—which became a beacon for emerging scholars in that new field. By the early Seventies, Duberman had broadened his struggle against injustice by becoming active in protesting the war in Vietnam and in playing a central role in forming the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force and Queers for Economic Justice. Down to the present-day he continues through his writing to champion those working for a more equitable society.

Martin Duberman (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

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Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right

How a notorious far right organization set the Republican Party on a long march toward extremism At the height of the John Birch Society's activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, "Birchers" believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society's extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life. Conservative leaders recognized that these affluent voters were needed to win elections, and for decades the GOP courted Birchers and their extremist successors. The far right steadily gained power, finally toppling the Republican establishment and electing Donald Trump. Birchers is a deeply researched and indispensable new account of the rise of extremism in the United States.

Matthew Dallek (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Tree of Bones

A new Civil War is brewing. With the city of Bewelcome as its headquarters, Allan Pinkerton’s Detective Agency leads a siege on Hex City, the town founded by “Reverend” Asher Rook and his consort, the Mayan goddess Ixchel. Monsters prowl the battleground, rocket trails of spells crisscross the sky, and an unnatural rain falls. Sides must be taken, but Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow, spiritualist Yancey Kloves, and even Rook must choose what ruin or redemption means to each of them. Meanwhile, Chess Pargeter gears up for the greatest fight of his life—and death. A battle out of hell itself …

Gemma Files (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

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A Giant Win: Inside the New York Giants' Historic Upset over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl

Legendary Giants coach Tom Coughlin takes readers inside his coaching masterpiece: Super Bowl XLII when Eli Manning and the underdog Giants beat the undefeated, 18-0 Patriots of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Super Bowl XLII was the greatest upset in NFL history. In A GIANT WIN, Coach Tom Coughlin recounts the strategies and people that made it possible. Coach Coughlin reveals the intricacies of the game, revealing details only a coach would know. He also details, more than ever before, his relationships with some of the greatest, most iconic players of those Giants teams, like Eli Manning and Michael Strahan. A GIANT WIN also provides a frame for Coach Coughlin to discuss his life in football-including his years with the Giants as an assistant coach in the late 1980s and 1990, when he helped win a Super Bowl working under Hall of Fame Head Coach Bill Parcells and alongside the coach he'd oppose in Super Bowl XLII: Bill Belichick. A GIANT WIN is a self-portrait of one of football history's most successful coaches during his signature game.

Tom Coughlin (Author), Donald Corren, Tom Coughlin (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Rope of Thorns

Welcome to Hex City. Population: magicians. Thanks to hexslinger “Reverend” Asher Rook, sorcerers now have a sanctuary where they can live and work in peace. But a storm is coming—a tempest known as Chess Pargeter. Infuriated by his former lover Rook’s betrayal and sacrificed in the name of the Mayan goddess who is Rook’s current consort, Chess leaves a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Caught up in Chess’s crusade are Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow and a young woman spiritualist. But there are more than Chess’s own demons to be reckoned with, including a resurrected lawman with a bone to pick—and a final judgment to deliver.

Gemma Files (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Book of Tongues

In Gemma Files’s horror–fantasy debut, former Confederate chaplain Asher Rook has cheated death and now possesses a dark magic. He uses his power to terrorize the Wild West, leading a gang of outlaws, thieves, and killers, with his cruel lieutenant and lover, Chess Pargeter, by his side. Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow is going undercover to infiltrate the gang, armed with a shotgun and a device that measures sorcerous energy. His job is to gain knowledge of Rook’s power and unlock its secrets. But there is someone else who has Rook in her sights: the Lady of Traps and Snares, a bloodthirsty Mayan goddess who will stop at nothing to satisfy her own desires. Caught between the good, the bad, and the unholy, Morrow will have to ride out a storm of magical mayhem to survive, in this debut novel, the first book of Files’s “weird Western Hexslinger trilogy…[which] is chock full of hellish horrors” (Mike Allen, author of Unseaming).

Gemma Files (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

An Angel in Sodom: Henry Gerber and the Birth of the Gay Rights Movement

Henry Gerber was the father of American gay liberation. Born in 1892 in Germany, Henry Gerber was expelled from school as a boy and lost several jobs as a young man because of his homosexual activities. He emigrated to the United States and enlisted in the army for employment. After his release, he explored Chicago’s gay subculture: cruising Bughouse Square, getting arrested for “disorderly conduct,” and falling in love. He was institutionalized for being gay, branded an “enemy alien” at the end of World War I, and given a choice: to rejoin the army or be imprisoned in a federal penitentiary. Gerber re-enlisted and was sent to Germany in 1920. In Berlin, he discovered a vibrant gay rights movement, which made him vow to advocate for the rights of gay men at home. He founded the Society for Human Rights, the first legally recognized US gay-rights organization, on December 10, 1924. When police caught wind of it, he and two members were arrested. He lost his job, went to court three times, and went bankrupt. Released, he moved to New York, disheartened. Later in life, he joined the DC chapter of the Mattachine Society, a gay-rights advocacy group founded by Harry Hay who had heard of Gerber’s group, leading him to found Mattachine. An Angel in Sodom is the first and long overdue biography of the founder of the first US gay rights organization.

Jim Elledge (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

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Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir

An unvarnished accounting of one man’s struggle toward sexual and emotional maturity In this unconventional memoir, Jonathan Alexander addresses wry and affecting missives to a conflicted younger self. Focusing on three years—1989, 1993, and 1996—Dear Queer Self follows the author through the homophobic heights of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Bill Clinton, and the steady advancements in gay rights that followed. With humor and wit afforded by hindsight, Alexander relives his closeted college years, his experiments with his sexuality in graduate school, his first marriage to a woman, and his budding career as a college professor. As he moves from tortured self-denial to hard-won self-acceptance, the author confronts the deeply uncomfortable ways he is implicated in his own story. More than just a coming-out narrative, Dear Queer Self is both an intimate psychological exploration and a cultural examination—a meshing of inner and outer realities and a personal reckoning with how we sometimes torture the truth to make a life. It is also a love letter, an homage to a decade of rapid change, and a playlist of the sounds, sights, and feelings of a difficult, but ultimately transformative, time.

Jonathan Alexander (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

When the Angels Left the Old Country

In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth: Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her. Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they've left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold. With cinematic sweep and tender observation, Sacha Lamb presents a totally original drama about individual purpose, the fluid nature of identity, and the power of love to change and endure. When Jeska's grandmother accidentally calls her by a stranger's name, she seizes her first clue to uncovering her family's past, and hopefully to all that's gone unsaid. With the help of an old family photo album, her father's encyclopedia collection, and the unquestioning friendship of a stray cat, the silence begins to melt into frightening clarity: Jeska's family survived a terror that they've worked hard to keep secret all her life. And somehow, it has both nothing and everything to do with her, all at once. A true story of navigating generational trauma as a child, I'll Keep You Close is about what comes after disaster: how survivors move forward, what they bring with them when they do, and the promise of beginning again while always keeping the past close.

Sacha Lamb (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter

“The world is full of information. What do we do when we get the information, when we have digested the information, what do we do then? Is there a point where you say, yes, stop, now I shall move on.” This exhilarating collection of essays, interviews, and correspondence—spanning the years 1988 through 2018, and reaching back a decade more—is about the simple concept that ideas matter. They mutate, inform, create fuel for thought, and inspire actions. As Kelman says, the State relies on our suffocation, that we cannot hope to learn the truth. But whether we can or not is beside the point. We must grasp the nettle, we assume control and go forward. Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime is an impassioned, elucidating, and often humorous collaboration. Philosophical and intimate, it is a call to ponder, imagine, explore, and act.

James Kelman, Noam Chomsky (Author), Donald Corren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Donald Corren